


The Dark of Night

by silver_fish



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, Post-Weirdmageddon, i guess? or bonding over accidentally starting the apocalypse, missing moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23224621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_fish/pseuds/silver_fish
Summary: Mabel still doesn’t really understand how it all happened. She isn’t even sure if shewantsto.
Relationships: Ford Pines & Mabel Pines
Comments: 7
Kudos: 46





	The Dark of Night

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/laphicets) / [tumblr](https://kohakhearts.tumblr.com)
> 
> i’ll probably never write for this fandom again unless its a gift or commission or something but i rewatched gf during quarantine and i am all up in my feelings now so. mabel is my fave i just want her to bond with her grunkle ford ok! i'm sorry if my characterizations are way off, but, otherwise, please enjoy! :)

Even at night, the Mystery Shack is never really _quiet_. There are creaky floorboards, the subtle buzz of currents through cords all over the house, and, then, too, there is the sound of flipping pages.

It’s nearly the last day of summer, and Mabel has been here for hours, it seems like. The table is clear all except for her scrapbook, which she has been fingering through since she came down here. Whatever the time is, it doesn’t really matter; she wouldn’t be able to sleep even if she wanted to.

She knows, now, that summer can’t last forever. She _does_. But it still hurts, especially when they are still working on restoring Stan’s memory and getting back on track after their defeat of Bill. It isn’t so easy to just “go back to normal,” if they even ever _had_ a normal.

She smiles a bit as she comes across a photo of her and Dipper from Summerween. A part of her wonders what their next Halloween will be like, but even with the niggling doubt that preys at her mind, she knows it won’t matter what happens, because at least they’ll be _together_.

When she moves to flip to the next page, the sound of footsteps behind her makes her jump; her fingers fumble at the corner of the page and she drops it.

“Mabel?”

She relaxes, glancing behind her, and tries for a smile. She didn’t expect anybody else to be up at this time—Dipper was fast asleep already when she slipped out of their room—but Ford is always working at odd hours, according to Stan, at least.

“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” he wonders, coming into the room and sliding down into the chair beside her.

“Shouldn’t you?”

He laughs. “Touché. Well, what are you up to, then?”

Her smile falls away. “I just…”

“Ah, I see.” He peers down at the scrapbook. “Worried about your uncle? Stan will be all right, Mabel. He’s too stubborn to not be.”

She drops her gaze down to the picture of her and Dipper. “Yeah,” she mutters, absently running her finger around the edges of the photo.

For a long moment, Ford doesn’t speak. Mabel probably wouldn’t know what to say if he did; she has never connected with him quite the way Dipper has. He’s still her Grunkle, but…

“You know,” he finally says, “when I was your age, I wouldn’t have wanted to lose my brother, either. Even now...I suppose I always knew that if I needed someone, Stanley would be there. When suddenly he wasn’t…” He shakes his head, as if to cut off his own words. “What I mean, Mabel, is that I shouldn’t have told Dipper he should stay here. You two are so close, it would be a terrible thing to separate you.”

Mabel sort of gets the feeling like he doesn’t really want to be saying any of this, like each word is being forced from him. She doesn’t know if it makes her feel better, either, exactly; there is a tightness in her chest that she can’t seem to shake loose.

“Grunkle Ford?” she ventures.

“Yes?”

She chances a look up at him, but in the low light of the flashlight propped up against the side of her book, it is difficult to see what expression he is wearing.

She takes in a deep breath, then asks, “You’ll miss Dipper, won’t you?”

Even in the dark, his surprise is obvious on his face. Such a weird expression, she thinks. Surely he must know how obvious his attachment to Dipper is?

He says, “Of course I will.” But then: “I’ll miss both of you. I know I wasn’t here with you the entire summer, but these past weeks have been some of the best of my life.”

“But you wanted Dipper to stay.” As soon as the words fall from her lips, she claps a hand over her mouth, looking away from him in embarrassment. It’s not like she’s _jealous_ of Dipper. Besides, he’s coming home with her anyway, so what does it matter if Ford wanted him to stay in Gravity Falls? Mabel was really only upset because she didn’t want _Dipper_ to stay here without _her_.

But even as she thinks it, she knows it isn’t totally true. The picture of them in the scrapbook smiles up at her, a reminder of all the other things they’ll be leaving behind. They both made good friends here, both experienced new things. For maybe the first time in their lives, they weren’t the “weird” ones anymore. Or maybe they were, but weirdness is normal in Gravity Falls, isn’t it? Things people used to tease them for in school were celebrated here.

And now they’re sort of heroes, aren’t they?

“Ah,” he says, like Mabel is some sort of strange equation he has finally found the answer to. “I know better now, Mabel. I am sorry for trying to separate you. I suppose I was being rather selfish.”

Mabel ducks her head, her hair falling like a curtain before her face. She isn’t entirely sure what she feels, but she knows that this isn’t what she wanted to hear from him. There are so many things Dipper and Ford have in common, and Mabel knows she can never even get close. Most of all, she realizes that they both made sacrifices to save the town while Mabel was stuck in that bubble—and all she did was make things more difficult for Dipper.

She doesn’t remember it all, exactly. She knows she was tricked, but the time between her fight with Dipper and waking up in Mabeland is blurry at best. Whatever she handed over to Bill was important, but she doesn’t know how, or why. Dipper would have—he was the one carrying it with him, after all. He was the one Ford trusted enough to protect it, and Mabel handed it over for _nothing_.

“Are you still looking forward to your birthday?” Ford asks suddenly. “It isn’t so far away now, is it?”

She peeks out at him from behind her hair. “Grunkle Ford, are you trying to cheer me up?”

He looks about as awkward as he sounds, too; if he was sitting across the table from Dipper right now, Mabel suspects he would know what to say. But Mabel is not Dipper, and he does not know what to say.

“Is it not working?”

Her lips twitch slightly. “Well, maybe. It’s just that…I’ll miss summer, that’s all. I know now that trying to make it last forever, or…or forgetting painful memories, isn’t the right thing to do. But it’s still…”

A pause, and then, “That’s very mature of you, Mabel.”

 _Except_ , she wants to say, _that Dipper made me realize all that._

“It’s all right to be upset, though,” Ford continues. “Isn’t it? We’ll be missing the two of you here as well.”

“Thanks, Grunkle Ford.” She straightens up and offers him a tremulous smile. “We’ll miss you guys too! Dipper can’t do nerd stuff with me like he can with you, after all.”

He doesn’t return her smile, though. Instead, he frowns.

“Mabel,” he says seriously—too seriously, Mabel thinks in alarm—“I don’t know exactly what Bill did to you, but if that’s what’s bothering you, you should tell someone about it. Just because Bill is gone doesn’t mean you can’t still be affected.”

And he’s speaking from experience, she supposes. But Mabel doesn’t know what Bill did to Ford any more than he knows what Bill did to her. If “did” is even the right term, anyway. She was perfectly willing, wasn’t she? And the more she has thought about all of this, the more she’s started to think that it must be her fault—because she gave Bill that _thing_.

She shakes her head. “It doesn’t bother me at all—”

“Are you certain?” He sounds only somewhat sceptical, though. If Mabel were to tell him now that yes, she is certain, she’s pretty sure he would believe it, and they would never talk about this again.

But even as she opens her mouth to do exactly that, she knows it is the wrong thing to do. Her jaw snaps shut again. A small sigh slips between her lips as her shoulders slump again.

“I guess it bugs me a bit,” she admits. “I mean, Dipper’s always saving me, but it was my own fault I needed to be saved. And...and any time I’ve saved him, it’s been my fault he was in trouble too! If I had just helped him like I promised, he never would have made a deal with Bill, and when _I_ did it, I was just trying to ignore what he really wanted.” As the words keep coming, her eyes begin to sting. She looks down at the picture again. “I don’t even understand what _happened_ , Grunkle Ford.”

“Well, it’s over now, isn’t it?” He reaches a hand toward her, then stops before it crosses over the scrapbook, hesitant. “Bill tricked me too, Mabel. And I was a lot older than you are now.”

“But my reason was selfish.” She sniffles. “And everything that happened—I think it was my fault, because I...because I took Bill’s deal.”

For a moment, there is nothing but the quiet buzz of the Shack around them.

And then Ford says, “ _I_ built the portal, Mabel.”

The picture swims in her gaze. She bites her tongue.

“I listened to Bill. I let him control me for months because he told me I was smart.” He shakes his head. “Whatever he said to you, you shouldn’t blame yourself. The best thing to do now is remember that Bill can’t control us anymore.”

“I wanted summer to last forever,” she whispers. “I thought—I didn’t want Dipper to stay. I didn’t want Dipper to have adventures with somebody else for the rest of his life.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him move slightly, but his hand remains on the table in front of her scrapbook.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, and now she is the one shaking her head.

“I don’t know what I gave him, but—it was because of that, wasn’t it? That thing in Dipper’s backpack?”

“The rift.” His agreement isn’t a judgement, but a mere fact. “Perhaps it was wrong of me to tell Dipper not to let you or Stan know about it. But I hope you know better than to give other people’s things to someone else,” he adds, sounding almost worried, though Mabel thinks he ought to be disappointed in her. Dipper wouldn’t have done what she did, after all, and look how everything wound up because of it!

“I do.” She swallows thickly, blinking hard. “I shouldn’t have done it. I was…I was just upset, and I thought—I thought I was having something taken from _me_ , so…”

“I think we’re more similar than you think we are, Mabel.” When she glances up at him, he is smiling a little. “Stan sacrificed his entire life for me, and I couldn’t even forgive him for something that happened when we were kids! All along, I thought he was the selfish one, but now I’m beginning to see that isn’t the case at all. You see, Mabel? I doubt Dipper blames you for any of what happened. You oughtn’t blame yourself either.”

“What about you?” she blurts out.

His smile falters. “Me?”

“Do you—do _you_ blame me?”

“It was my own mistake that caused this,” he says, like a reminder.

“That doesn’t mean you…”

“I don’t blame you.” Now, his hand reaches over the book and seeks out hers. Even without the extra finger, his hand would largely outsize hers; as it is, her hand seems to disappear entirely as his envelopes it. He is surprisingly warm—for the first time tonight, Mabel realizes how cool it is down here, away from the security of her bed.

“It’s more my fault than yours,” Ford insists. “You’re a great kid, Mabel. A few mistakes here and there don’t change that.”

Her lip wobbles dangerously. “You…you really think so?”

His other hand comes to rest atop her head. “I do,” he says. “I also think we could both use some sleep. What do you say?”

She screws her eyes shut, then nods. As soon as she does, he pulls away from her. The sound of his chair scraping against the floor rings between her ears as he rises, and yet even as the floorboard creaks beneath his weight, she does not hear him walk away. Nervously, she cracks one eye open to see him standing above her, looking perhaps as concerned as she has ever seen him.

It starts slowly, a small lump in her throat, but in no time at all two tears sliding down her cheeks turns to thirty, and she cannot seem to catch her breath at all in the heavy darkness of the night. She grips the edge of the table, looking down at her knees while her chest heaves painfully. In front of her, the floorboards creak again, and for a moment she is sure Ford is going to leave, but then there are arms wrapped around her and her forehead falls against a sturdy shoulder. One of Ford’s hands rests at the back of her head, the other nearer to her neck.

She isn’t completely sure what she’s crying for. What she _does_ know is that it huts more than she thinks crying ought to, but it would hurt a whole lot more if she were all alone right now. Mabel doesn’t know Ford quite as well as Dipper does—maybe she never will—and yet, in this moment, she isn’t sure if anybody else would feel quite so safe and warm.

As suddenly as it comes, it begins to ebb away. Around Ford’s arm, she lifts a hand to scrub at her eyes, and he pulls back from her, freeing her other arm so she can wipe the rest of the tears from her face.

“Better?” he asks uncertainly. She gets the feeling that he has never really done this before—or if he has, it has been a very, very long time.

She drops her hands to her lap, cheeks reddening. “Yeah. Thanks, Grunkle Ford.”

He reaches over her and carefully flips the scrapbook closed, then picks up the flashlight. Wordlessly, he turns it over and hands it to her.

Holding the light out in front of her, she gets to her feet, shivering slightly as her feet make contact with the cooled surface of the floor.

“Well,” Ford says, then stops. Tries again: “Well, good night, Mabel.”

She looks up at him. For the first time, she thinks she truly might understand what he’s feeling right now—that, in fact, he might even be feeling a little like she does.

“Good night,” she tells him, then quickly steps forward and returns his embrace. It does not last nearly as long, but she finds herself smiling as she pulls away and turns to head back to her room. As she tiptoes up the stairs, she finally hears his footsteps move across the kitchen and back to his own space.

Outside their room, she switches the flashlight off and eases the door open, careful not to disrupt Dipper. Suddenly, she feels she will sleep well tonight—better than she has the past few days, at least.

She hopes Ford will be able to, too.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are always appreciated! xx
> 
> (p.s. catch me on twitter [@laphicets](https://twitter.com/laphicets) or tumblr [@kohakhearts](https://kohakhearts.tumblr.com) for writing updates. i also sometimes take writing requests on both!)


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